Here come the winds …

A brief insight from a female arborist working in Cornwall during the stormiest January on record

Fiona Curtis, TreeWise Ltd

Fiona carrying out sectional felling of a storm damaged tree. St Michael’s Mount is in the background – 80% of its trees were flattened by the storms that hit Cornwall in January 2026.

Layered up in yellow oilskins, hood up, boots on, my clothes are heavy, battling against a howling southeasterly. Somehow the rain is still getting down my collar, cold drops rolling down my spine; I’m wet through. It’s the third storm this month.

Storm Goretti devastated the woodlands of Cornwall, Storm Ingrid came in hot on its heels to finish its work and now Storm Chandra is here to take whatever is left, testing the strength of those last holding rootballs. Any tree still standing has been left to face this last storm solo.

As I drag heavy wet brash across a garden, I stare over the crashing sea to St Michael’s Mount. I can see the other half of our crew working out there in the storm, heads bowed. Eighty per cent of the island’s trees flattened, its silhouette has been changed forever.

I’ve come down from climbing a large storm-damaged cypress, a victim of Goretti. As the wind picked up, the rootball and surrounding ground started lifting. This isn’t worth it: it’s too dangerous. We tension up winches to hold it in place, hoping it’s enough to hold the tree upright until the storm passes – until it’s safe to climb again. Below, the owners of the house are staring at us through the window, nervous but hopeful. For now, there’s nothing else we can do.

Storm Goretti was like nothing we’d seen before, we knew there was something coming, but named storms are becoming a little too commonplace and we disregarded it. But as the shops started shutting, the schools closed and public transport was cancelled, we started to think this one could be different. This one could be big.

All through the night the phones were ringing – trees on houses, trees on cars, roads blocked, friends barricaded in, woodlands gone … completely gone. It was overwhelming: where do we start? Power had gone, so had water. Phone signal was bleak.

The days rolled by, working long into the nights, truck headlights illuminating the destruction. Offers of home-cooked meals came from kind people who knew we’d been out in the elements all day, with news of another storm heading our way. After that it just didn’t stop. The wind and rain were relentless. Heading to one job, another tree down in our path, cutting our way through, new emergencies before we could get to the old ones. We needed to be everywhere and we couldn’t keep up. Mother Nature was putting us through our paces.

The rest of the country didn’t seem to realise what was happening, how bad the situation was, the level of devastation. And as January crawled by, the storms kept coming, people were still trapped in their houses, roads were still blocked, still no power, water or phone lines. Cornwall, the place that everyone loves in summer, had become completely forgotten and abandoned in its moment of need. We were starting to feel very small, very isolated this monumental task in front of us and no sign of help coming from the outside.

Quick pancake pitstop.

This sycamore seedling is growing on the root plate of a beech in Trengwainton Garden and has altered the angle of its growth since the beech fell in the storms.

At the end of each day, I peeled off the layers of waterproofs at my front door, then my work clothes, my thermals, my underwear, and left them all in a puddle as I jumped in the shower, staying in too long, desperate to warm up my bones.

Every radiator in the house became lagged in clothing, mismatched gloves. Boots by the fire, the smell of petrol and sawdust slowly evaporating out of them, while I just hoped they would dry by the morning.

This was the wettest January I can remember, but working outside is good. We enjoyed those split seconds of sun, the rainbows – appreciated the little things … cooking up hot lunches in the cab, hand-caught octopus, roadkill venison, Sainsbury’s sausages. The doughnuts, the yum-yums, fresh cups of coffee brought out by grateful customers, hot egg sandwiches and Thermoses full of tea … maybe a pint after work in the pub in front of the fire. Everyone loved the smell of us in the pub.

As a female in this industry, it’s been a journey. I’ve been met with many different responses, sometimes positive, sometimes negative: old boys exclaiming ‘Err, it’s called tree “fellas”, isn’t it?’, assuming I’m a boy or the ‘missus’ of one of the other guys’; I must be gay, or just enjoy the male attention. I’ve had customers look over my shoulder hoping to see a man turn up. But I’ve also had women exclaim with pride and a tight hug that this is why they burnt their bras in the ’60s.

Working on St Michael’s Mount.

Just one of so many large trees devastated by the storms.

Women have always been connected to nature. ‘Witches’, we work with plants, with the seasons, so why don’t more of us work with trees, learning how they grow, how they move? A job that keeps us strong, at a time when we are realising how important strength training is for women. Why not get paid to climb and swing and lift – to use our brains, figure out the puzzle of a tree, angles and ropes, thinking two or three steps ahead? It’s all encompassing up there: chainsaw in hand, flowing through the branches. Arboriculture doesn’t have to be macho. There are people attracted to it for the saws and the machines, the felling of big trees, the climbing of bigger trees, ‘the lumberjack’: the epitome of manliness. But it also requires a gentle touch, precision, doing what we can to ensure humans and nature can survive together safely, keeping trees in gardens, and planting new ones on sad, empty verges. Arboriculture isn’t about destruction.

As we continue to pick through the mess, and assess the storm damage, we start to worry about the future of our remaining trees. People have become nervous, wanting to fell remaining trees just in case. Where trees have fallen on yachts there’s talk of felling an entire woodland. But we need to remember that it is our overindulgence and our destruction of nature that have got us into this mess; we shouldn’t be surprised that these storms are finally coming for us.

As January came to an end, and the evenings start to draw out ever so slightly, the daffodils start to appear and we could start to see the light at the end of the wintery tunnel. This job isn’t perfect and it doesn’t make us rich, but it lets us be outside, in nature, using our bodies. We are not in front of a screen and it’s not just about making a heap of money for someone. But it is about trying to ensure humans can live within nature and nature can flourish around us, and at the end of the day I get to come home satisfied, and leave my job in that puddle of wet clothes at the door.

This article was taken from Issue 213 Summer 2026 of the ARB Magazine, which is available to view free to members by simply logging in to the website and viewing your profile area.